With Pure Egyptian Cotton (The Paper's Shot to Pieces)
by R. Donald James Gauvreau
Summary: This is how the world ends, with fire and hurt and a video game that didn't belong (knowledge of Animorphs probably required, knowledge of Homestuck... not as much)
1. Disk One: The Streets and All the Trees

_A/N Okay, okay, I'm sorry, but this just wouldn't leave me. Not at all. So it's here, it's on the screen and out of my head, and now I can think about other things. _

_Unlike how I prefer to do things, this story will update as it is written. There is a plot, things will be moving toward an end, but chapters will be presented non-linearly and may at times be character studies as much as anything else. The story is less about where the kids are going than how they're getting there and what's happening to them._

_The story takes place some time after The Attack (#26). The exact timing will be established later._

_Read this at my Archive of Our Own account if you want to see the crummy sprite art that'll be accompanying some/most/all of the chapters. _

**Disk one: Genesis**

**Chapter one: The Streets and All the Trees**

Your name is MARCO. It is not your BIRTHDAY today, but you are going to get a gift anyway. You and all your friends. From Santa Claus. A blue SPACE WIZARD Santa Claus with a DORKY NAME.

You're not specifically expecting this to happen, but it's six in the evening and nothing WEIRD has gone down yet today, so you figure that it's about time for something to happen already. This is why you're checking your watch every few minutes, incidentally.

You really don't know what you're going to do if you go to bed tonight without anything WEIRD having happened.

You have a variety of INTERESTS, all of which are VERY COOL. You like READING COMICS. You like PLAYING VIDEO GAMES, which you are definitely the BEST at. You most certainly do not like FIGHTING A SECRET GUERILLA WAR against your ALIEN WOULD-BE OVERLORDS, but seeing as how there are in fact PARASITIC BRAIN SLUGS everywhere you suppose that you're just going to have to deal with it.

On the bright side, another alien gave you and your friends the power to change into other kinds of animals, which is VERY COOL, probably even on the level of Spider-Man.

And then you became pals with that alien's brother and son (and the son… wasn't an alien? yeah…), but that's ANOTHER STORY.

You have some DADDY ISSUES because your father fell into depression after your mom died and you basically had to raise yourself. He's better now, though. You have some MOMMY ISSUES, on account of her not really being dead but actually just INFESTED with one of those PARASITIC BRAIN SLUGS that got mentioned earlier. She hasn't gotten better yet.

Screw this. You just have ADULT ISSUES, okay? This is why you pretend to be dumber than you really are, because you've noticed that adults will ignore you if you're NOT IMPORTANT, and if they ignore you then they can't be a PROBLEM.

Your Web Access America username used to be Cassie98, but that got confusing (JUST AS PLANNED) because one of your other friends has that same name, so you changed it to WGorilla99, which is a reference that none of your friends will ever get because not even Jake has read that comic.

Especially not the friend that's an alien (and also blue, but not a SPACE WIZARD).

MARCO: Stop thinking about yourself and look at your watch again

You note, with equal parts satisfaction, worry, and annoyance, that the minute hand on your watch has only two minutes ahead. And if that weren't enough to be suspicious, the second hand has stopped moving altogether.

Also, the pigeons that like to take a crap on your feet are pretty frozen. You'd be lying if you said that wasn't a big hint as well.

You weren't expecting the SPACE WIZARD before, but the whole TIME FREEZE-Y THING is kind of his CALLING CARD so you're ready for anything. Or so you'd like to tell yourself. Honestly, all you know is that you know nothing when it comes to this guy. One time you had to save a planet of PARASITIC BRAIN SLUGS THAT LIKED SHOPPING, which was such a ridiculous adventure that you finally had to put up your "I think I can accurately expect what this guy is gonna do next" hat for good.

MARCO: Watch out for EXPLODING CHOCOLATE MILK

You don't know where the thought of that came from, but you reckon that it's not a bad idea. After all, every time you've thought that the last CRAZY couldn't be topped, the universe sidled up over to you and said

"Hello.

"I'm the universe.

"And I'd like to prove you wrong."

So far, the score is something like Marco: 0, Universe: ∞

And it doesn't disappoint this time, either, because here comes the universe's top SPACE WIZARD, the Grand Poobah of Eight Colors, Astro Smurf himself.

You wonder if his skin is stuck on the blue setting or something. Like, seriously. What is up with that?

"I have an offer that you can't refuse," he tells you, and that's when it all falls apart for you because oh no, now he's making pop culture references.

Who approved this? You do not remember giving Astro Smurf permission to do this. This is your shtick, if it's going to be anybody's.

At least your friends are here, so you can sort of, like, spread the crap around and you don't have to deal with all of it yourself.

Oh dear Stan Lee, he's opening his mouth again. What's it going to be this time?

MARCO: Be Astro Smurf

**You are now Astro Smurf. **

Your name is, or was, AZURE LEVEL, SEVEN SPAR, EXTENSION TWO, DOWN-MESSENGER, FORTY-ONE. This was a pretty unwieldy for casual use, though, so you were also called TOOMIN. You like this one better.

You don't deserve it.

You kind of live in a BLACK HOLE, but that is PRETTY COMPLICATED STUFF, honestly. In fact, you are pretty sure that if you chose to tell your whole backstory to these kids it would take TWO HUNDRED PAGES to get to that part, and are even surer that none of you have that kind of time. You'll probably tell it to a DEAD PERSON some other time. They always have time.

You like the word TIME, which has two really nice-sounding consonants at either of it and is also PRETTY IMPORTANT. You are very big on meddling in the development of ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS, which you are pretty good at because you once played a lot of sessions of a game called just that. This was back when people called you Toomin, but now the games are SERIOUS because they're played with real people. You played under the name ELLIMIST, which you chose because it sounded KIND OF BREEZY.

Right now probably seem like a DASTARD, which you think is a kind of upper class-sounding bastard. In your defense, you do this because your opposite number is a RED-EYED PLANET GUY called CRAYAK. His interest, just so long as we're dumping heaps of information here, is building a UNIVERSE OF CONFLICT, PAIN, and TERROR, and whoever kicked the bum out of the galaxy that he came from was content to leave Crayak alone like some kind of INTERGALACTIC TRAILER TRASH.

But who are you kidding? You are definitely a DASTARD. A really big one, as long as you're being honest here. Just a nicer one than the other guy is.

After all, you were playing ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS FOR REAL before you ever met the RED-EYED PLANET GUY.

You take a moment, longer for you than for them, before you speak again. You take this, to allow them to speak between themselves and to allow you to gather your determination together.

It is as once so much easier and harder to do this, seeing them in the flesh. Not just theirs, but to see them, if only partly, from the vantage point of flesh yourself. Or something like unto it.

"So tired..." You smile. "Do you remember when I offered you a way out?" you ask them. It seems so long ago to you, but things happen differently to you than to them. "I said that you and your loved ones could be relocated on another world, safe from the Yeerk invasion."

"We didn't agree then," Jake says. "What makes you think we'll do it now?"

You shake your head.

"This time it's different. What I want to know is, how much do you love this world?" Your eyes settle briefly on Aximili, but you move on before he notices.

"Enough to stay and fight the Yeerks, Ellimist," Cassie responds immediately.

"To beat them, of course. To save your world," you say, nodding gently. "But what if the way to win lay in _not_ fighting?"

Cassie's face betrays her confusion. "H-how..."

_The Yeerks will never leave unless they are forced_ Aximili asserts.

"This is true," you acknowledge. "But Crayak and I have come to an... understanding. We have made a deal, one that should satisfy you."

"Since when is Crayak making deals?" Marco asks. "I don't remember the Howlers being very diplomatic."

"As things are going, you _will_ win," you tell them. "Within the limits of the rules there is nothing that Crayak can do to win. I have convinced him of this."

"So he's just going to make the Yeerks leave or something?"

"As with all things, both of us must give up something of value."

Understanding starts to reflect on Jake's face. "Us. You want to give us up... But why?"

"You will win. Have you thought yet about how I have said nothing of the number of casualties? The _cost?_"

You can feel Cassie's thoughts reverberating. She feels guilty for not having done so. She carries so much, and so undeservedly. But that is how they all are.

That is why you must do this.

"Some of you will die and some of you will live. After you have defeated the invasion you will be in a position to hinder other plans of Crayak's. As you will, if you are not removed."

"So by taking us out now, Crayak doesn't lose anything that he won't anyway," Jake muses. "What about the other Yeerks?"

"Our deal does not extend past what happens here, but the Yeerks need your world very badly. They need many more host bodies than they have, and if they lose Earth then they will not be able to recover from the loss. It will take time but their defeat will be inevitable." You pause. "It will not help that most of the leadership stationed here, including Visser Three, will not survive."

"So the Yeerks get the boot here and pretty soon they're going to lose everywhere else, too?" Rachel asks. You confirm this before she continues. "Alright. I'm in." She slips her hands into her pockets. "So what's Crayak going to do with us?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

You love the surprise that you see on her face.

"You are leaving, but Crayak is not taking you. You will be beyond his reach." You retrieve six CDs from the air and hold them between the fingers of a hand that suddenly looks slightly less human. "You could call it a game, if Crayak and I may call our war a game. But if it is so then it is a deeper game, a deeper game from before the dawn of time. Older than this universe.

"It does not belong in this universe. Indeed, it took Crayak and I both to retrieve the power that is in these CDs and reconstruct it so that it could work, despite its... foreignness."

So much blood.

"What is it?"

"It has been called by many names. Sbarn. Scarb. Sgrub. But the name that is intended for this world," you tell them, "is Sburb."

You tell yourself that the screaming you hear is only in your head. This is true, but it does nothing to help.

_What is its purpose?_ Aximili asks.

"It will bring you to a new place. There, you will have one last evil to destroy." You give one of the CDs to Rachel; her hand was already outstretched from the instant that you revealed the game to them. Jake and Marco follow. The others remain thoughtful, not rejecting it but still too focused on listening to think to take a CD from you. "You will defeat it. You will save many worlds as you do so and then, having proven yourself worthy, you will make your final journey and travel to a new universe totally beyond the reach of this one. That is what Sburb is for: the making of universes. And Crayak will never be able to reach them."

You distribute the last CDs.

"Even if you do not succeed, you will have defeated the Yeerks simply by agreeing to play the game. But if you do succeed, and I am confident in your abilities, then you will have ensured that, no matter what happens here, there will be a universe that will never know Crayak. A more peaceful universe, if you are willing to nurture it."

There is little more to be said. You leave them soon after, warning them that they would have to begin the game at separate houses and telling them that all the rest, they can learn on the way.

You are _proud_ of them, these six children that so readily agreed to leave their world forever to save it. So, so proud of them.

And so ashamed of yourself.

You did not lie to them about your motives, or the game, or its consequences. Not exactly. But you left many things unsaid. They would have refused your offer if they knew the terrible cost that would have to be paid, so you made the decision for them and told them only those things that would make it seem almost their duty to play the game.

Your name is not TOOMIN. You do not deserve that name. The face that once claimed it would turn his face away from yours in shame. You are only ELLIMIST now, the great PLAYER OF GAMES. You are not a good person. You know this. You do not deny it. This is why you are here today, seeking a small parcel of redemption through the salvation of six children that have already been hurt so much and will only continue to suffer if they do not leave this game of yours that you and Crayak are playing.

But how can you realize any kind of redemption for yourself when you are willing to purchase their salvation with an ocean of blood?

(You tell yourself that the screaming you hear is only in your head. This is true, but it is a presage of the screaming that will shortly come to pass.)

ELLIMIST: Be the Dying Girl


	2. I Dont See an Easy Way to Get out ofThis

_A/N This story, by the way, will update about once a month. i say "about" because sometimes it'll be twice a month. Won't be less, though. _

_Oh, and if anybody is even halfway decent with sprite art (even halfway would be better than me) and would be willing to help me spruce this up, their help would be repaid in cookies. Or stories. I'll write a short fic for you. Pick your poison, your fandom and themes and characters and all, and I'll get it done. _

**Disk one: Genesis**

**Chapter two: I Don't See an Easy Way to Get out of This**

Your name is CASSIE, which is why Marco had to change his WAA username. Your own username, by the way, is Zoe249. That's kind of important, but we won't say why just yet. There are other things on your mind. We'll just say you're keeping a secret.

We could talk about your INTERESTS right now, like how much you love ANIMALS and the AWESOME FARM that your family owns… owned. Yeah. You're having some trouble with tenses right now. And that's kind of… kind of why you don't want to think about that stuff right now.

It all seems kind of POINTLESS, thinking about the past. Especially with what happened after you started playing Sburb. It has been SEVENTEEN DAYS since you and your friends entered a strange place called THE MEDIUM. You all found yourselves separated and on SMALL PLANETS WITH ODD NAMES and no explanation for how your houses, which had been brought with you, were still running on electricity when they seemed to be cut off from any kind of power supply. There's still internet, too.

It HURTS just to wrap your mind around it.

Lots of other things are HURTING, too.

It had been going so well, you had thought. There were people here, of a sort. You mean, they were TRANSLUCENT WOLVES that kept going on about the periodic table and E=MC2 and things like that and they barely ever SHUT UP, but they were still people, you guess, and you were making pretty progress in figuring out what the problem was in this place and how to fix it. So had everyone else, it seemed.

But now…

You guess it had been destined from the start. It was all in your title, wasn't it?

Your name is CASSIE, and you are the MAID OF BLOOD, or so the wolves told you after they stopped TALKING ABOUT COPERNICUS. You were on a planet called the LAND OF HOLLY AND KNIVES, imperiled by a foul and all-hungering DENIZEN called FENRIR. It was your DUTY to save this world and RESTORE WHAT WAS MISSING.

If only you could have figured out what that was in time to do something about it.

Instead… No, _of course_ you were the Maid of Blood. Because here you are, bleeding out your life like a busted pipe. You don't know whether to feel grateful or regretful that Jake is able to be here with you. He had told you that it was so depressing, where the game had sent him. So he came for some better company than a bunch of MAGENTA SIBERIAN TIGERS that were, apparently, worse conversationalists than the animals on your world. And instead he gets to watch you die on a stone slab.

CASSIE: Tell him. Even if it HURTS.

"R-Rachel…" you tell him.

"Don't worry. She's okay. I talked with her."

You're trying to morph. If only you could morph, then all of your wounds could be healed and you'd be back in fighting shape. And you _can_ morph, you really can, but it's taking so _long_ and you don't understanding why.

"No. Not that." You try to shake your head but barely move it at all. "She attacked me."

She must have done something to you. You can feel the change but it's taking so long. You won't make it in time. But she needed you to last. To die slowly, not all at once. And she destroyed your computer, even though it's too far for you to get to now. Even if you were capable of walking anymore.

It HURTS so much.

CASSIE: Keep talking.

"You have to tell the others," you whisper.

"What?"

"Sh-she t-told me…" you stammer, the words hard because of what they mean, not the physical strain that it takes to make them. "T-Tobias. She killed him." The silence hangs over the two of you for a second as you take another breath.

Oh God, it HURTS so much. Just to breathe.

CASSIE: Keep on talking. Keep talking. Keep talking.

"Marco… and Ax. They don't know."

Why did it have to happen like this?

"But I…" Jake swallows. "You'll die alone."

There are no wolves in sight. They fled from the very sight of Rachel. Her jacket, stained with blood.

You had thought something was wrong. Instead she pinned you to wall with knives that she had taken from the trees outside. She twisted them and forced them deeper, talking to you all the time, talking like you weren't even there and then suddenly you were, as if she didn't even know for sure if you could hear her or if she was even saying anything at all or it was just in her own head.

Tobias was dead.

She didn't even morph to do it.

And then she dragged you here, left you here to die like a sacrifice to some bloodthirsty god. Slowly. She told you how long it would take. Down to the minute, so long as you wouldn't move and make it worse.

You had to beg Jake not to move you. Moving HURT so much. Even to talk.

CASSIE: Ignore the pain. Keep talking.

CASSIE: You have to keep talking.

And now you have to beg him to leave you. "They need you. They don't know."

You close your eyes when he leaves, so that you don't have to watch him go. So that your vision goes away altogether instead of slowly, slowly fading into black.

The darkness is a blank slate for your mind and it conjures up memories. Of plains of holly, trees with knives hanging on their branches like steel fruit and climbing vines with striped berries and shrubs that glow in the dark. Wolves with clipboards, hanging on your every word whenever they stop talking for long enough to notice that you actually exist. Wolves with _clipboards_, and sometimes even graduation outfits with those silly square hats.

The farm where your family lived. Slowly being overgrown by polka-dotted climbing vines and some purple moss kind of thing that smells like chocolate but tastes horrible, like radishes or something.

It's so beautiful. All of it. Everything is beautiful and everything… everything HURTS.

The farm where your family lived. Lived.

The meteors.

You remember the meteors.

And it was all your fault. Everyone's. But sharing the blame doesn't make it weigh any less.

CASSIE: Be Jake. Save your friends.


	3. And You'll Begin to Wonder Why You Came

**Chapter three: And You'll Begin to Wonder Why You Came**

Your name is JAKE BERENSON, and you are the PRINCE OF VOID. After Ax found out about _that_, well, there went any chance of getting him to not call you "Prince Jake."

Pretty hopeless title, now that you come to think about it. What _were_ you thinking, believing that, oh, maybe things were going to go well? Since when does your luck just _finally start turning up_ like that?

Nothing's gone right for you since you found out that your world was being invaded by PARASITIC BRAIN SLUGS.

You like BASKETBALL, you like COMICS, all of the things that normal kids should like. But you're not normal. After all, you can turn into animals. How many normal kids can do that? How many normal kids have waged a six-person guerilla war against aliens?

Things had always been a little crazy for you since you learned about the invasion. And then you found out that it was all a part of some kind of COSMIC BOARDGAME being played by effective gods. And then… And then they gave _you_ a game.

It's been SEVENTEEN DAYS since you started playing Sburb. SEVENTEEN DAYS since your world ended and your dog, Homer, started talking. SEVENTEEN DAYS since you were transported to a world called the Land of Steel and Bone. There were SIBERIAN TIGERS there, and they talked and had magenta-colored fur and passed copies of Machiavelli back and forth in huddled, whispering groups.

You didn't like how they would stare at you. Not like they were hungry. Or hateful. It was like they were two handshakes short of worshiping you, and something made you afraid to find out why. And the world that you were on. The Land of _Steel and Bone_. Is it any wonder that you needed a break and decided to see Cassie in person? It's a good thing that space here wasn't like space in the universe you came from. There was air in space here, and you were just one Peregrine Falcon morph and a few hours from seeing your friends.

But Cassie was missing and her house was wrecked when you arrived. Rachel was there, blood on her hair and hands, but you didn't notice that, for all the blood, there wasn't a scratch on her. She told you that Cassie had been hurt and told you where to go.

You didn't question it. You just had to get to Cassie. And that's where you found out that Rachel had attacked her. Had as good as killed her, left her to bleed out slowly and somehow unable to morph quickly enough to heal the damage. Had killed Tobias before her.

It was clear to both of you what Rachel had done. Cassie was alive to keep you occupied. You had to warn Ax and Marco before it was too late, even if that meant abandoning Cassie. But there was one more sick choice that you were being forced to make.

Time was limited. Rachel was long gone by the time you had found Cassie, and you didn't know who was next. Cassie's computer had been broken, no doubt to keep you from messaging Ax and Marco from it. Your own computer was practically as far away as your friends were.

Ax or Marco? Who to fly to? Ax might have been more capable of defending himself. Even if he couldn't morph, he still had his tail blade. But what if that wasn't enough? Marco was your best friend. Rachel would surely have guessed that you might have chosen him over Ax. There were a hundred reasons that she might have chosen either of them.

Second-guessing, third-guessing, fourth-guessing yourself, you find yourself standing at the threshold of Marco's house. And you find it empty.

You lose. Marco's gone already.

But there isn't even the scene of a struggle.

JAKE: Turn around.

Rachel is standing five feet behind you. She looks different somehow. Her face seems more weathered and tired than it was earlier today. Her eyes are wide open, barely blinking, as if she's forcing herself to run on fumes. And her clothes…

Her shirt is clean from blood now, if a little scuffed up, but from the middle of her calves down she's absolutely soaked with blood. It's as if she had just waded through a river of gore.

JAKE: Get out. Now.

"I wouldn't stay there for much longer," she says. Her breathing is heavy, in and out, in and out, but she speaks as calmly as a clear sky.

JAKE: Get away from the house!

Rachel's gone.

She's right beside you.

You blink and she's gone again, you're gone, your chest _hurts_, and Marco's house… Marco's house is in flames.

Your ears hurt.

His house. There was an explosion.

Rachel's gone.

She's where she had been all along.

She looks at the wreckage, the flames and the broken frame, half-collapsed and continuing to crumble inward, and then looks back at you. The corners of her mouth tip up. "You chose wrong. How sad."

You force yourself to stand up. "Then I…" Wait. She was here too. She couldn't have gotten to Ax and back this quickly. You can't begin to imagine why, but she must have dallied or stuck around here.

Ax is still okay.

"I don't know why you've snapped," you say. "You know I would have helped if I could have been there. Whatever happened. But I have to stop you. I can't let you kill Ax too."

She laughs.

She actually _laughs_.

"You know, you'd think that it'd be hard, wouldn't you?" she says musingly. "Sleeping. But counting corpses seems to work just as well as counting sheep." Rachel shrugs, not looking you in the eyes. "I remember every single body, even if it's getting hard to keep count."

"H-how hard can it be?" There's only the six of you.

"You have no idea what I'm doing."

How can she lose track of half a dozen? Unless… Has she been killing other people too? How could you be so selfish, to only think of your friends as being in danger?

You struggle to get the question past your lips. "_Why?_"

What happened? What happened to her?

"Haven't I always been your good little murderer? Maybe I have gotten a pit bull morph. 'Sic him, Rachel!' Right? _Right?_" Rachel closes her eyes for a second before she starts again. "This is for your own good!" She smiles dangerously, teeth bared. "Sh-should I kill your tigers, too? I could tell you what they're doing but you never believe me. You- you _never_ believe me."

JAKE: Stop talking. Just… go away. Stop talking to her.

No. You can't.

You have to figure out what happened to her. Before you take care of her, you have to know why.

This is so wrong.

"I know what you're thinking," she mutters. "Stop me. Kill me. Put me down. Like an animal! Well you can go to Hell, Jake. _How do you expect to defeat me when I have already killed you?" _she roars.

"I'm alive," you tell her. She's alive, you're alive, maybe everybody else is dead but she's talking, she's _talking_, and maybe you can figure something out. No more killing. No more blood.

"My hands are clean," she mutters. "You have _no_ idea. No idea. Everybody lies. Everybody lies…" she continues to murmur. "You don't know. What Cassie's done. I'm worried about Marco. He's scaring me."

The way that she's talking, it's like she's barely aware that you're there.

"Rachel…"

"No, you don't get it. You don't end it here. You don't kill me or save or fix or stop me. You don't save Ax. Ax will be dead before you ever get to him." Rachel grins. She looks as if there's nothing that's ever made her as happy as the thought of his death. "I'm just stalling you so that his body has more time to cool. That's very important," she says quickly. "You can't go messing that up."

JAKE: Run away. Right now. Before she can spill anything else.

JAKE: She's just talking nonsense. Get out. Save Ax.

You need to get out of here. Whatever she's planning to do to Ax, you need to get to him as quickly as you can.

But you can't morph, you realize. You've been trying to avoid that thought this entire time. Trying to avoid the feeling of weakness and sheer vulnerability that would come with consciously acknowledging it. But it's there. Even though you can feel the change, it's happening so slowly. You could starve to death before you completed morphing, you think, but you can feel the sensation all the same.

"Why not kill me?"

"Because it isn't time for me to kill you yet, stupid. I'll shut up the voices for you. But not yet."

"The voices?"

"Whispers. Suggestions. Thoughts that aren't yours but maybe seem like it. Don't quite belong. Weird. Wake up," she says. "You need to _wake up_. Wake up," she repeats. "Wake up. WAKE UP. Wake up wake up wake up…" Her eyes are starting to fill with tears and a hand has worked its way into gripping a fistful of hair like a life preserver, and it's becoming obvious that she's only half aware of you at best. "No. Don't look at me like that. I know how you're looking at me. Stop it. I'm not crazy. I am not some kind of nut."

"What?"

"They're coming." She swallows. "With fire and fangs and steel they are coming. Wake _up_, Jake. Wake up."

"Who's coming?"

Rachel pulls out a knife. Your muscles tense but she doesn't move to attack.

With how she moved before, and didn't move, how she appeared and disappeared and seemed to just _be_, here and then there, you wonder if you would have any chance of reacting anyway.

"I didn't want to do it this way, but I guess I have to," she says, turning the knife over and over in her hands. You recognize it as one of the knives that was growing on Cassie's planet. "That's the way the story goes. This is the only way it works."

The knife sinks into her stomach. It tears through cloth and flesh as she slides it from one side to the other and her clothing, all of it now, turns red and brown and every shade in-between. She falls to her knees, forces it deeper.

She is silent, no sound but that of the metal going through flesh. But you can see the scream in her eyes. The silence that says that she has endured so much worse than this and that none of it matters to her enough to let out so much as a gasp.

Before you can react, as if it had happened in the space of a second and a year, the scream in her eyes has gone away. The light goes away too, and she falls backward, bent in a position too uncomfortable for any living person to maintain for long.

Any living person.

Before you realize what's happening, your morphing goes back to normal and you're looking at your cousin, your dying… your dead cousin, through the eyes of a falcon.

Ax. You have to get to Ax. You can bury Marco and Rachel and everybody else later. You have to get to Ax first.

JAKE: Be Ax. Talk to your friend.


	4. And in My Bones I Feel the Warmth

_A/N Some slight format changes. I can't do some symbols, but... Anyway, if it affects anything, for good or ill, let me know. _

**Chapter four: And in My Bones I Feel the Warmth**

Your name is AXIMILI-ESGARROUTH-ISTHILL and you are, perhaps surprisingly, the one person here who is actually playing Sburb just as well as anybody can. If anybody asked you the reason, you'd probably reel off some stuff about Sburb having an intuitive Z-Space interface and picking up weird things from myths of the Time Matrix that have proven surprisingly relevant.

But to be honest, you have no idea what you're doing. You're pretty sure that this has so little to do with any of the myths of your people that there is really absolutely nothing in them at all about Sburb.

_The game should not exist._ This is worse than the Time Matrix. Worse than anything that the Ellimist has shown or done or told you about. Nothing here seems to work like you expect it to, and the whole mechanism of the game— a _game_, a computer disk!— defies your every understanding of the universe. Why, just Tirith's Laws _alone_—

=== AX: Spare the lecture.

Alright. There's the bigger issue here, anyway— you're doing pretty well, all things considered. You witnessed the destruction of a world, but it wasn't _your_ world. Your world, your people, are safe.

You didn't know what you were getting yourself into, and it's clear that the Ellimist intended to say whatever he had to in order to get you to play the game. It isn't your fault. But it wasn't your world that was broken, so of course you don't feel the sorrow and the agony that begs for a scapegoat and can find only these few survivors.

So yes, you're acting as if you know what's going on, because that's the only way that you can be the rock that your friends need. They're counting on you to know all the answers about this strange other universe and the game that sent you here, because that's who you've always been. The TOKEN ALIEN TEAMMATE who KNOWS ALIEN STUFF.

You're sure that you don't know what's going on, and you're glad that the questions have been few and simple and you've been able to give answers that at least sounded plausible. Because you're even surer that admitting that you didn't have any answers would just about destroy your friends.

(The supreme irony, of course, is that your friends are busy destroying or being destroyed by each other at this very moment, and you haven't the faintest clue about it. It's actually pretty hilarious, at least for any psychopaths lucky enough to catch a view of what's going on.)

You probably won't ever realize it, but that's exactly why you're doing the best job out of anyone here.

=== AX: Talk to your friend.

Oh. Of course.

You got a little distracted there, didn't you? There's something important you need to take care of, apparently.

_Sorry, Rachel. What was that?_

Very important, she says. There's something that she needs to show to you.

You walk together, past the MIDNIGHT BLUE CHEETAHS populating this world. They like ARCHITECTURE.

(AR-KI-TEK-SHUR. ARK-I-TEKT-SURE. ARK. ARK. ARRRRK.)

There is something beautiful about the knife in her hand, you decide. Her grip is experienced, worn, _knowing_, as if it had been with her since she had been born. And its sharpness is like the sharpness of a tail blade.

It is not like other knives that you have seen on Earth. But there are many strange things that can be made here, by means of a machine called an alchemiter. All of you received one. Marco said that it was like being able to put peanut butter and chocolate together, but out of _anything_.

You wonder if she's doing better than the rest of your friends. If the challenges she is encountering are helping her to focus on something else.

She had been the first to cry when Earth's fate became clear to you. Even before Cassie.

(She will never bring up, and you will never put it together on your own, that she had a younger sister.)

Rachel mutters something. It sounds like "TICK tock."

_What did you say?_

"Heh? Nothing." She sighs. "Cassie messed up with her kernelsprite. I think."

Ah. KERNELSPRITES.

(KERRRR-NEL-SPRITE)

You had a kernelsprite (all of you did). It was a FLASHING SWIRLING BLACK AND WHITE SPHERE THING that appeared soon after you started playing Sburb. Then one thing led to another and you put TELEVISION in it and it… _was_ a television. With a tail. That spoke to you with much clipping and rearranging of moments of television shows.

(You very much like when it uses FOOD NETWORK CLIPS)

You were told that this is called PROTOTYPING.

_How did she mess up?_

Rachel seems to mull over what to say. Eventually she settles on nothing. "Let me worry about it, okay? You haven't woken up yet, have you?"

Ah. Waking up. Rachel has told you about DREAMSELVES. Other versions of yourselves. Sleeping on the moons of other planets. She says that Marco has "woken up."

Tobias has woken up as well. You wonder what his dreamself is like.

You have tried very hard to learn things while pretending that you knew them all along. You must do this. To keep your friends stable.

"TICK tock."

_Why are you making clock noises?_

"I… I'm tired of counting down. But it's… there. All there."

"Counting down to what?"

"Forget it. I'm not crazy," she says firmly. "I am not some kind of nut."

_No. But if you are under some kind of stress, then I would like to help._

Something begins to take shape in the distance. A stone slab. There is a small pillar at each corner.

"Forget it, I said." And then she mutters something else. It sounds very much like "I'm sorry," but you decide not to press the issue.

Rachel removes her gloves and puts them in a pocket.

_It is a stone slab_ you tell her.

"Yes," she replies.

The slab looks almost like a human bed, you think.

"You know that thing they say, about how a single butterfly beating its wings in China can make some tiny change that turns into a bigger change that maybe turns into a tornado?"

_No._

"Right. Of course not. Well, it's like… The world isn't _math_, you know? It's not one plus one equals two. It's more complicated than that."

_Actually, the world _is_ math. It is simply very highly complicated math. You see—_

Rachel shushes you. "So… All that power, right? And the butterfly doesn't even really know how it's going to turn out. It just flaps its wings and… maybe there's a tornado. Maybe not. Maybe it never even finds out. Maybe it does… How does it deal with that, do you think?"

_I am unaware of butterflies having sufficiently complex thought proc—_

"Pretend it _did_."

_Then I suppose that it would just beat its wings the best it can and hope that it will all work out. It's a butterfly. It just does what butterflies do. And hopes for the best._

You're examining the slab when the pain comes.

Agony. Moving, feeling, like lightning.

You turn without thinking. Your response is reflex. You strike with your tail blade.

Your tail blade.

The first conscious thought you have is that your tail is _gone_. It is on the ground. It is _gone_.

Rachel's knife, her strange, lovely knife, is bloody.

So are her clothes.

And there is pain again. Pain in your hearts, and confusion. Then pain of a physical kind, slashing through your belly.

She moves too quickly for you to do anything. She is here, and then she is there. You process the movement, and she is gone again.

You find yourself lying on the slab, on your side. Your blood is in your fur, running on the stone, soaking her clothes. It flows off the stone and collects around her shoes.

"TICK tock," she mutters. "I can't… keep delaying. I already took too long. Butterflies, what am I _thinking_?"

=== AX: Morph.

You can't morph. You aren't morphing.

Your vision starts to blur. Whether she leaves or your eyes are failing you, Rachel vanishes.

You are alone.

Your name is AXIMILI-ESGARROUTH-ISTHILL and you are dying.

You were the KNIGHT OF BREATH, KNIGHT to your PRINCE and sworn to protect the LAND OF SPICES AND LIGHTNING. And you are a failure.

You don't know what you did wrong, but this… You can't begin to comprehend it.

The only thought that gives you any peace, as sick as it might be, is that this is _your_ fault. That, as bad as she may have sometimes gotten, the seeds of _this_ were never in her.

=== AX: It's okay. You were as good as any of them.

=== AX: You were as good as you could have been.

You want to believe that. So very much.

Where are these thoughts coming from?

It's been so strange, ever since you entered the Medium. So strange…

=== AX: Rest.

But...

=== AX: Be Rachel. Kill somebody else.


	5. Why Did You Leave Me Here Alone?

_A/N I really like writing chatlogs. Oh, and check this story out at Ao3 if you want to see some neater formatting. _

**Chapter five: Why Did You Leave Me Here Alone**

Your name is RACHEL BERENSON, and you are the ROGUE OF TIME.

SEVENTEEN DAYS AGO you were transported to the Land of Décor and Butterflies. It was not how it sounds. The furniture was busted, the wallpaper torn, and the butterflies were all bloody.

It was a not-unfaithful portent of what was to come, in retrospect.

You're pretty bloody yourself at the moment. It's all over your clothes. Not to worry, though. None of it is yours. Well okay, all of it is yours. Kind of. It's complicated. By a whole lot.

You could go into more detail at the moment but you're kind of busy with some knives right now. Knives and a girl just a little bit older than yourself.

You bury the CHEF'S KNIFE in her sweatshirt. She's pinned. But not scared. Never scared.

Thunk!

The BONING KNIFE goes in.

Thunk!

The BREAD KNIFE goes in.

Thunk!

SEVEN-INCH UTILITY KNIFE.

And she doesn't scream at all. She knew it was coming, after all. She asked for it. Literally asked for it.

"Make it hurt," she told you. You always let them pick how they're going to die, even if it's almost always the same way. One more decision that you don't have to make.

And after the last knife goes into her body, you hold her tight against your chest. Like a rag doll, a stuffed animal, your little sister on a stormy night. You hold her tightly. Her blood doesn't stain your clothes, it _soaks_. Like the blood on her hands, spilled on hers so it wouldn't have to spill on yours.

Like Pilate, your hands are clean.

Your name is RACHEL BERENSON and you are the ROGUE OF TIME and you have watched yourself die again and again. Killing yourself.

"I'm not crazy," you whisper. "I am not some kind of nut."

Again and again.

Your computer beeps and you turn to face the monitor, trying to scrub the last ten minutes from your memory.

(your carpet is stained brown, the color of dried blood)

It's from Ax's computer. You hope that's a good sign.

(you will never, ever get it out)

_Lumberjackwgl45535 has begun chatting with Lawless85…_

_Lumberjackwgl45535 has taken an alias, Future_Lawless85…_

**Future_Lawless85:** were good to go

**Future_Lawless85:** mission accomplished see you soon

**Lawless85:** What about Jake?

**Future_Lawless85:** hes not here yet

**Future_Lawless85:** other Rachel must have done her job

**Future_Lawless85:** did you get word

**Future_Lawless85:** ?

**Lawless85:** No good

**Lawless85:** She had to send the information by another Rachel

**Lawless85:** In some other timeline we were wondering why we didn't get a message

**Future_Lawless85:** you mean she couldnt get into the damn house?

**Lawless85:** I think this makes it around sixty tries

**Lawless85:** Assuming there aren't some other ones that this time travel stuff erased

**Future_Lawless85:** goddamn it

**Future_Lawless85:** so sure we had it right this time

**Lawless85:** What are we looking for down there?

**Future_Lawless85:** something that could give us a damn edge against Marco

**Lawless85: **Couldn't we kill him before he went to ground on Derse?

**Future_Lawless85:** tried that already

**Future_Lawless85:** we can't go further than twelve days after we enter the game

**Future_Lawless85:** if we kill Tobias before then it all goes to Hell

**Future_Lawless85:** he has to meet his Denizen first and that cant be rushed

**Future_Lawless85:** and if we kill anybody before Tobias then it all goes to Hell

**Future_Lawless85:** and Marco's too damn suspicious

**Future_Lawless85:** as soon as Tobias dies he jumps

**Future_Lawless85:** and if we kill his dreamself he knows and figures us out

**Future_Lawless85:** except that we cant kill his damn dreamself anyway

**Future_Lawless85:** so I dont know why any of us did that

**Future_Lawless85:** but Marco never trusted us to begin with

**Future_Lawless85:** I guess he thought we might fly off the damn handle here or something

**Future_Lawless85:** ?

**Future_Lawless85:** just have to figure out some other way to kill him

**Future_Lawless85:** send a hundred million of us to invade derse or something I guess

**Future_Lawless85:** oh

**Future_Lawless85:** shit

**Future_Lawless85:** okay send this down the line if you travel back

**Future_Lawless85:** forget about trying to wake up

**Future_Lawless85:** your dreamself is confirmed dead

**Future_Lawless85:** as of a few days ago

**Future_Lawless85:** Marco finally convinced the dersites to let him into the damn tower it was sleeping in

**Lawless85:** Can't one of us go back and retrieve my dreamself before then?

You pause, fingers hovering over the keys.

**Lawless85:** Me, I guess?

You have to wait awhile before she responds. She must be talking with whichever Rachel had made contact with her.

**Future_Lawless85:** tried

**Future_Lawless85:** five times

**Future_Lawless85:** they always knew

**Lawless85:** What about before Marco flips out?

**Future_Lawless85:** either he sees or someone tells him

**Future_Lawless85:** he gets suspicious faster

**Future_Lawless85:** no good

**Future_Lawless85:** listen youve got to get to the core okay?

**Future_Lawless85:** got no idea what that means since this Rachel doesnt know either

**Future_Lawless85:** she says she was told that some other Rachel was told you would figure it out though

**Future_Lawless85:** oh and youve got another Rachel to get ready for

**Future_Lawless85:** obviously

**Future_Lawless85:** okay so Jakes not here yet so there shouldnt be any problems with Ax

**Future_Lawless85:** make sure you have the knives ready

_Future_ Lawless85 has become idle…_

Kill them. Kill them every time.

It's the one thing that they've asked you to do for them, these doubles from the future.

And every time it happens, you wonder. You wonder if you'll end up going to the past yourself, if you'll turn out to be Future Rachel for some other Rachel.

Just thinking about it makes you sure that you'd ask for the same thing.

They always die. If they're going to change the past then they've got to die. Those are the rules of the game and they've told you that a lot of them died miserably trying to change that.

Dying at your hands is a way of atonement, perhaps. But more importantly, it's so they know how the end is coming.

**Future_Lawless85:** Hey.

The other Rachel doesn't say anything after that. You wait for a few minutes, and then your fingers go the keyboard.

**Lawless85:** Yeah?

**Future_Lawless85:** did it matter?

**Future_Lawless85:** did it matter?

**Future_Lawless85:** in the end I mean

**Future_Lawless85:** does any of this matter?

**Future_Lawless85:** my life

**Future_Lawless85:** and my

**Future_Lawless85:** you know

**Future_Lawless85:** my death

**Future_Lawless85:** do you think really changed anything?

**Future_Lawless85:** did I matter?

**Future_Lawless85:** me I mean

**Future_Lawless85:** just me

**Future_Lawless85:** just this version of me

**Future_Lawless85:** or us

You think about what you've been told. You think about it for a very long time. And then you think about what to say. How to say it.

You don't know where the words come from, but you know that they're the right words.

**Lawless85:** Yes.

**Lawless85:** You've been brave. You've been strong. And good.

**Lawless85:** You matter.

**Lawless85:** You've kept my hands clean. Again and again and again. All of you.

**Lawless85:** I can't pay you back for something like that that.

**Lawless85:** But you. You mattered. You. Just you.

_Future_Lawless85 has stopped chatting with Lawless85…_

You push the keyboard away and turn away. Your double will come

And all that you can think to yourself is that you have to do this. You have to win.

And nothing else matters.

You switch off the monitor. And in the newly-fallen darkness of the room, you smile dangerously.

"TICK tock."

RACHEL: Be Marco. See the straight line.


	6. I Carve My Eyes, I Skin My Face

**Chapter six: I Carve My Eyes, I Skin My Face**

And you are Marco. Again.

But you aren't just Marco, no. You're the BARD OF HEART, and SEVENTEEN DAYS ago the world ended and you found yourself up and transplanted to a place called the LAND OF DANCE AND DAWN, which was the most pathetic excuse for a planet you'd ever heard of.

That's when the local gorillas informed you that you would have to face a monster called YALDABAOTH if you were going to save their world.

Well fine. You can deal with that. Your world was being invaded by PARASITIC BRAIN SLUGS and your mom was one of them and… and now your world is dead and so is your mother. And so are most of your friends. One of them a few times over. And… gorillas? Talking gorillas? Fine. Better than PARASITIC BRAIN SLUGS.

Big nasty monster with tentacles for brains or whatever it turns out to be. Fine, fine, you can _do_ this, you thought. You and all your friends. Yaldabaoth and his Denizen buddies wouldn't know what hit them.

=== MARCO: Wonder if you're just some idiot teenager with a death wish.

Maybe. But you started down that path a long time ago, back when some four-eyed scorpion-centaur with blue fur gave you basically-magic powers. Yeah, this is just business as usual.

And now you've got just one job.

Ax is dead. Cassie is dead. Tobias is dead.

Rachel is dead too, you killed her just a few minutes ago, but that doesn't mean anything for real. You've been killing Rachels all the time for the past couple of weeks. All the freaking time. You are up to your neck in dead Rachels. Derse could build a new moon out of all the dead Rachels you've made.

This was always insane, right from the start. A handful of kids fighting an alien invasion? Look what happened. And damn it, you can't even play a _game_ right without Rachel flipping her case off and turning Rabid Xena Bitch on all of you.

The other night you woke up in bed, and you didn't know what you were or where. If you had hands or fins or claws or talons, if you were covered in blood or sweat, if you were safe at home or waiting for the next Rachel attack on Derse.

Freaking Derse.

When this all began you worried that Crayak had something up his red sleeves, so when you started Sburb and entered the Medium you went in like some kind of Latin Batman and had a stack of contingency plans as high as your waist. You had all of the contingency plans. All of them.

Even a bunch of really crazy ones for things that you're surprised you ever thought of. But you're glad that you did because they were exactly what you needed.

You're actually kind of surprised by how well things worked out. You could have messed up any step of the way. You hope that the Ellimist isn't still here, nudging you around like some piece on the chessboard.

You ran to Derse when Tobias died. Your dreamself had already woken up and figured out the lay of the land. It was a pretty nice place, if a little heavy on the PURPLE GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. Also filled with bad guys who want to destroy this little bubble universe that you've got going on here in the Medium. Bad guys who were really, really surprised to hear that you were willing to work with them (but not so surprised as to look a gift horse in the mouth).

But hey, whatever. You'll figure that out later. You have a plan.

You know, you used to have this perfect, happy, suburban life. Now you're planning missions for the bad guys with the baddest bad guy of them all, trying desperately to stay alive at least long enough to take care of Jake and get him through this alive.

=== MARCO: Look at the baddest bad guy of them all.

Jack Noir is _definitely_ the BADDEST BAD GUY. He wins the BAD GUY PRIZE. He must win it every year (and you're not entirely certain that there _isn't_ such a thing here on Derse). His official title ARCHAGENT, which really means something like HEAD OF THE ALIEN GESTAPO.

For a little while Jack seemed to think that trying to stab you was an appropriate way of saying "Hello." You considered that this was actually possible in his culture, and you didn't want to be culturally insensitive, so you decided to be part of a culture for which the appropriate response to "Hello" was turning into a gorilla and ripping the other person's arm off.

Jack hasn't tried to stab you since you told him about your newfound cultural heritage.

=== MARCO: Realize that you're staring. Feel awkward.

And no wonder you're staring. Just look at those teeth. Did Jack stick knives in his mouth?

If he did, then it's a popular fashion on Derse.

=== MARCO: Really. Stop staring. Jack will get suspicious.

Yeah. You probably should.

You turn to your computer again. Or COMSPRITE, as it insisted on being referred to after you threw your computer into the kernelsprite.

Best stupid decision you ever made. You still don't know why you did it, but Comsprite has pulled its own these past couple of weeks. Especially when the Dersites here were debating whether to accept your proposal or mount you on a stake and leave you to rot.

No, they don't look a gift horse in the mouth here, but that doesn't mean they were sure at first what kind of opportunity it was that they were looking at.

"The Black King wants to talk with you again," Jack says. "Tonight."

You nod and turn back to Comsprite. It's done some kind of unfolding thing or… or something, but there are, like, six monitors here now and you're not really sure where they came from. It sure looked like it was unfolding itself, but then again it also kind of hurt to look at it while that was going on.

On one of the monitors you can see your house. Or what's left of your house, anyway. And there's another dead Rachel. Killed herself this time. Huh.

=== MARCO: You really don't like Jack.

_Huh?_

Where'd that thought come from?

But yeah, you guess that's a fair assessment to make. And as if just on freaking cue, Jack stops sharpening his teeth again to ask you a question.

"You're not supposed to be working with us, you know. You know that?" He looks at you carefully. He still can't figure you out.

"I know."

"We're supposed to be fighting each other. The Bard of Heart was supposed to protect Skaia."

"Right."

"Then what are you doing?"

You choose your words carefully. "I'm not playing by the rules anymore." You don't think about Jake this time. You think about Ax, about Cassie, about Tobias. Even about Rachel. "No one can tell me that this situation can't be changed."

And damn the Ellimist for putting you in this mess.

"But you're not _just_ lending a helping hand." Not a question. More a statement. Verifying. Putting it out there for you to deny.

If only things could be simpler, but no… What does this make you? Erwin Freaking Rommel or something?

You think back to the Black King. You think about your plan, and whether it's safe to tell Jack. You had to make your case to the monarchs and Jack separately, what they wanted wasn't always what Jack did, and their allies weren't necessarily his, but now you think you've got Derse firmly on your side.

But just in case, mum's the word for now.

"Adapt or die," you say.

That's all you'll tell him, but that seems to be enough. As it always is. You and him have an understanding beyond words. It would scare you if you didn't have enough other things to be scared by.

He waits a beat as if this wasn't the same answer you always give, and then Jack tells you that his people are almost positioned where you need them to be. Then he goes back to sharpening his teeth.

Rachel wants a war between you and her, that's fine, you'll play that out. You'll see how she likes it when all the cards are down. God help you, but fire will rain down on Skaia and you will rend the Medium to tatters if that's what it takes to finish this out.

=== MARCO: Rewind the clock. Be Tobias.


	7. Trying to Find, Find the Right Time

**Chapter seven: Trying to Find, Find the Right Time**

You are now TOBIAS. Your last name doesn't matter. You could shout it from the mountaintops now if you wanted, now that you've escaped the war. But you never cared much for the name. It means nothing to you.

Sometimes, you toy with the idea of calling yourself Tobias Fangor. It was the name your father had, before the Ellimist came and twisted history and left you like some kind of temporal flotsam even though your parents now had never met. How much his kid are you really, with that in mind? How does that even _work_?

You've never voiced this idea to anybody. You barely acknowledge it to yourself. But once, you almost whispered that that name, first and last together.

It has been TWELVE DAYS since the Earth died and you fled the meteors for the safety of the MEDIUM. Cassie is alive. Ax is alive. Jake is okay and nobody's gone crazy. Today is a very important day. Today is the day that you die.

But you don't know any of that. Today you're just a glorified FROG-CATCHER. It's kind of boring, really, and you have to keep reminding yourself to not eat the frogs.

Why do the most important jobs always seem to be the most boring?

Your name is TOBIAS and you are the SEER OF SPACE. This is a very important and boring job that seems to involve a lot of frogs for NO GOOD REASON at all. But that must be why they call this place the LAND OF WINDOWS AND FROGS.

The windows are also boring. And you are tired of smacking into them. They are everywhere, standing free on their own, of every shape and size. And they are so ridiculously clean and transparent. You could almost believe they weren't there at all.

Except then you smack into another one and, oh yeah, they exist alright.

The world is otherwise inhabited by STUPID CERULEAN RED-TAILED HAWKS who like AGRICULTURE. The idea of it, more. Hawk feet are hardly the best thing for handling farm tools. It also doesn't help that they don't know anything about farming in the first place. You figured that out pretty fast after the hawks started talking to you about how they were growing tomatoes because they needed the sauce to fertilize their grove of PASTA PLANTS.

So instead of actually raising crops they more wander around and dig up holes to put seeds in and awkwardly drag rakes and spades around like a flurry of FEATHERY MAKE-WORK BIRDS.

Luckily, hawks are still predators here even if they're somehow stupider than the hawks on Earth, and they get by just fine on mice and voles. And frogs.

You're kind of tired of keeping the hawks away from your frogs.

After you gave up on the hawks you fiddled around for a few days with something called an ALCHEMITER. It would take objects and make all kinds of hideous or nonsensical fusions out of them. But even that got old fast.

And there's a bunch of things that you're supposed to be doing with these frogs you're catching but again, it's kind of hard to operate the machine. Whoever decided to put the bird in charge of the high-tech was an idiot. It's easier to manipulate when you have OPPOSABLE MONKEY THUMBS but you've been a hawk for so long that being human is like wearing an ill-fitting rubber suit.

You've even forgotten how to make facial expressions without thinking about it.

Which is probably why you've decided to say "Screw this for a bucket of buttered mice at the drive-in," and fly around and around without anywhere specifically in mind. Well, okay, maybe somewhere.

The windows were put here by somebody. And even if you weren't kind of angry at the sight of the occasional crippled hawk shuffling along on the ground like an avian Tiny Tim, by this point you're ready to bring the hate on for your own sake. You and this Denizen of yours are going to have _words_, you decided, and this nonsense is going to stop.

You might also take offense at the monsters that are wandering around, but honestly they're having an even harder time than you are at navigating through this window pain obstacle course.

You fly for what seems to be a long time. There are portals in the sky. Portal after portal, bringing you ever closer to your destination.

To Echidna.

You find yourself in a space between worlds. You panic for a moment. Crystal spires float here.

You wonder why you came. This is not a good place to be.

=== TOBIAS: Stay still.

Right. Like listening to these random ideas popping in your head are turning out so well. Weren't you told not to confront your Denizen until later? And then you got the impulse to ignore that advice and fly right up and make her answer for all this window business.

And this place is getting kind of freaky and you don't if you should be here any longer. Maybe you're not cut out for this just yet.

But then you don't have time to take your decisions back. Because that's when she appears. Or it. A colossal sinuous _thing_. Human-like in places. A two-tailed snake below the waist. Armless. A face like stone, unmoving, unblinking. A back covered in countless crystal spires, blue and white and every color in-between.

**tobias fangor you are early**

You hear it. Not like sound. Not like thoughtspeak. But you know what is being said. It is like you are _remembering_ what has been said, having never actually experienced it.

**this is as planned**

Suddenly, bumping into windows doesn't seem so important to you anymore.

**tell us what you have lost**

You don't answer immediately, and it repeats the demand.

So you talk about Earth.

You realize that you didn't lose very much. Your family? Who knows what happened to your mother. You saw your sorta-kinda father eaten by a monster before you ever learned your relationship with each other. The rest of your family barely noticed when you disappeared.

Your friends are here.

The whole human race is gone, except for the five of you, but…

How human are you, anyway? You can barely remember to smile sometimes.

How much did you lose?

(I had the woods. And I had the sky) you say.

**you still have the sky**

**what you have is falling**

**will you die or will you die**

What? What kind of thing is that? That doesn't make any sense.

**rachel berenson is the hero of time**

**she will die a thousand deaths and kill a thousand times**

**if you ask her, this will be so**

**and this is your choice**

(Why would I do that?)

**the reckoning is coming**

**to survive it you must die**

**a sacrament on the stone table**

And you know, in a part of you that you didn't know was there, that this is so.

The Denizens are many things, and sometimes they are liars. But the Choice is a law. Working strangely for some and straightly for others

You understand this. Without words or feelings or thoughts exchanged, you understand this.

Echidna closes her eyes and drifts away. You have not spoken, but she knows you have made your choice.

The air is cold as you fly back. It is cold as you morph into human form. The keys of your computer, the whole world, so cold as you log on.

Your WAA username is T0bi. You had another one once, but too much time had passed the time you were stuck in hawk form. Hawks don't use instant messengers, and you guess you got out of the habit after you recovered the ability to morph.

Maybe your new username is a little unoriginal, but the meteors were already coming down when you realized you couldn't remember your password.

You type out a message.

T0bi: Rachel.

Lawless85: Hey, what's up?

T0bi: You need to come over.

T0bi: We need to talk about something.

Lawless85: What's wrong?

_T0bi has become idle…_

Lawless85: On my way. Hold tight.

You close out of the browser. You shut the computer down. And you wait for Rachel to come, so you can explain what she needs to do.

There's a stone slab not too far from here. It's where the hawks say heroes die.

The two of you will journey there.

**End of Disk One: Genesis**

**Requiring Disk Two: The New Gods**

**Insert Disk Two?**

**Y/N**


	8. The Curtain's Closed

**Begin Disk Two: The New Gods**

=== CASSIE: Ascend.

Your name is Cassie, and you are not dead.

It takes you time to fully realize this.

You remember dying, certainly. You remember Rachel's knives sinking into your flesh, scraping against your bones. You remember the blood gushing out. You remember Jake, and you remember telling him to go.

You remember dying.

But now you're here. And your clothes aren't bloodstained. Your clothes aren't even there. You're in some kind of brown hoodie outfit. But there's a symbol on the front. A diagonal line, crimson, with three drops falling down.

It's definitely got to do with blood. Is it because you died? Did you get some kind of second chance? Or is this what being dead is like?

It takes you even longer to realize that you are, in some way that is hard to pin down, _lighter_. There is something that is not there, that was. Not physically. In some other way.

It's a little like having finally woken up, with the last of the haze of sleep gone at last.

You realize that there were spaces here. Pauses. You were almost expecting to be told something or to feel something but you aren't. It's like waiting for the other half of a dialogue and looking up and seeing that there's no one there.

But why is that strange?

You're so caught up in this that when a large spider with a glass back comes scuttling over, you don't even appreciate that you should be caught off guard by it.

It beeps, and you realize that it's been making this sound for a little while now.

There are letters on it. Words.

This little spider is a computer. Somehow.

T0bi: It turns out that frogs are really important.

T0bi: Nobody ever explained why to me, just that it was. But these stupid hawks didn't have a clue.

T0bi: But it'll mean the difference between winning and losing.

T0bi: It is winning or losing.

You take a minute to process the words, then decide that yes, they make grammatical sense, but not in any other way. There's a more pressing concern for you at any rate.

Zoe249: What's happening?

T0bi: You died, right?

And then he tells you about the God Tiers. Words come to mind, of a wolf song from this Land. "I die, and I die, and in dying live."

Apparently it rhymes better in howl.

You're alive. You'll be that way for a good long time. If you die, you'll come back. Unless. Unless you died for _something_. Or you deserved it. Heroic, or Just.

Zoe249: What is this that we're talking with?

T0bi: How much did you play with your alchemy thing?

Zoe249: Only a little bit.

Zoe249: You made it with the alchemiter?

You shudder. The thing looks _hideous_.

T0bi: Yeah.

T0bi: We can't talk for long, though.

T0bi: It's really difficult to operate this and type as a hawk, you know, and I don't want to break the two-hour rule again.

T0bi: I need to go find the others. Jake's running around somewhere and he doesn't know what's going on.

T0bi: And you need to meet your Denizen.

Zoe249: And then what?

T0bi: I don't know.

The spider crawls away before you can respond, leaving you alone.

You sit on the slab. You think.

You know where your Denizen is. Fenrir. The wolves told you about him.

You look at the knives all around you, growing from vines and trees and bushes, growing in nice yellow patches like grass.

Is this what you're supposed to do? Kill Fenrir? It's like the world has armed you. And maybe that's exactly what it's done.

You're supposed to kill the beast. You're a god. It won't be a Heroic death until you've finished it. Heroes don't call it quits with the job half-done.

You pick a bushel of knives as you walk.

As you walk you feel the world. It takes no effort on your part. You are, and you feel. The world is a web of connections. Relationships binding everyone and everything. You'd call it the circle of life if you were in a Disney mood. Even the grass is connected to the wolves, just as the wolves are connected to each other through their innumerable relationships with each other.

Sometimes a link is strong. Sometimes it is weak. You never find two wolves that you cannot, through others, find a connection between. Everyone is connected together. The world is one, and you feel… you feel the Beat.

And through this interconnected world you travel. It takes awhile and it takes a short time. It takes no effort to _feel_, but so much to process what you're feeling that it's hard for you to keep track of the time.

The wolves are as bad about giving straight answers as ever. But you can feel them like you never had before. Wherever you go, you can feel them. Wherever you go, you become directly connected to them.

You were so frustrated with them before.

Fenrir lives in a cave. You reach it. You descend it. You discover it. _It_. Fenrir.

Like the idea of a wolf. Claws that could slay armies, a mouth that could swallow up the sun. A coat deeper than night, eyes gleaming with the stars, this is the beast that is the end of days.

And it is not chained.

Fenrir is upon you before you even finish thinking this.

Beneath its paws, you are being crushed.

So even here I am interrupted in my exile

Then I will go out to blacker spheres

But that will be a long and taxing way

I must eat

Saliva drips from its jaws, like bits of the ocean. Dirty, translucent-black, once red but rotted and discolored, mixed with blood. It stinks as it splashes near your face.

You try to acquire him, but as soon as the process begins the great wolf presses its paws further on your chest. You don't know if he understands what it is you tried to do. Possibly he just noticed the relaxing effect of the process and knew that you were doing _something_.

Regardless, the message is clear.

A hero's death is as satisfying as it is permanent

But I am not without mercy

The wolves that live above are weak but in number will suit for a feast

Choose then who will be spared

And what Tobias said before comes to mind. A death Heroic or Just. You didn't deserve this, perhaps, but to die for the wolves? You think that qualifies as Heroic. So it will be the end of you. But what else can you do?

Did you come back just to die again?

But what else can you do?

You close your eyes. Whisper an apology that will never be heard by the one for whom it was meant. And then you tell Fenrir to spare the wolves.

There is silence. There is laughter. There is a great manic howl, a sound louder than any you have ever heard before.

And then the laughter stops, and the speaking returns, and you learn that you had been wrong all along.

You are the Hero of Blood, meant to restore a thing that was lost.

You thought you were meant to kill. You forgot your purpose. You added to it. You did not accept it as it was.

There were wolves in the world above, where you had walked. And Fenrir was a wolf. He was bigger than them. He was greater than them. He was a king of kings, but he was one of them.

Not a monster. An exile. Self-exiled. Disgusted with the distractions and the vanities and shallowness of his people, he abandoned them.

And then _you_ came. The prophesied Hero of Blood. You knew the wolves. It was said that it would be thus. You had known them after a fashion before you had even come, and once you were here you came to know them after another fashion.

You knew their frivolity, their fickleness. Their disregard for things that mattered in favor of formulas and tables and trivia that only had value insofar as they were applied to things of inherent worth.

And you spared them anyway, even at the cost of your own life. Your life, so valuable and heavy and dear to you, for the sake of wolves that did not know enough to weep when one of their own had gone away or for the sake of their king and father that had abandoned them.

Perhaps it was possible to have judged them too hastily. To have given up hope too fast.

But one can repent and be a teacher once again, can one not? Perhaps it is time to try again.

All this, Fenrir tells you, in a way that penetrates to your soul like common sounds and thoughtspeech never had. And then he rescends to the world above the caves.

His claws can still slay armies. His mouth can still swallow up the sun. His coat is night and his eyes are stars. All these things that were, still are.

But you look at him as he leaves, and you are afraid no longer.

=== CASSIE: Be Jake. Feel the ash beneath your boots.


	9. Somewhere Along in the Bitterness

**Chapter nine: Somewhere along in the bitterness**

You are now JAKE. You are standing in the square of a town.

The town has been reduced to ASH AND SMOKING CINDERS. No two blocks of steel have been left laying upon each other. For every tiger that you see, with broken bones and bloodstained fur, you have to step over the corpse of another.

"The Prince of Void," the tigers say to each other in hushed whispers. "He that will return at last, returned at last."

"What happened?"

"The Rogue of Time," one of them says to you. "She is come."

There is fear in their eyes. There is hatred there as well. You can sympathize. But what you can't do is forget that there was something scary in them before the town was destroyed. You didn't spend so much time away from here because they were obsessed with checkers or something like that.

Silent predators, you are forced to keep at the forefront of your mind, are not a good thing.

Elsewhere, great spires rise up to the sky, metal towers and bone constructs that are like vast hands clawing at the sky. This is not a comfortable place to be, physically or emotionally.

You can see the spires in the distance from where you stand.

You look at the tigers again. Something is knotted in your stomach. It's been that way since you got here. It's why you spent so much time away from this place.

"What was happening here?" you ask them.

"The Rogue of Time came and she slaughtered us."

"No. Before that."

The tiger smiles. You didn't know that tigers could smile, not like that. They probably shouldn't be able to. But these tigers can, and it makes you remember what Cassie told you once. Smiles are dangerous in the animal world. By some quirk humans think that smiling is a good thing, but everything else sees the smile as bared teeth.

Tigers shouldn't smile like this one is doing. Is its smile human and friendly, or as threatening as it feels to you?

"It is our purpose to serve the Prince of Void. It is the purpose of the Prince and his retinue to midwife new worlds. Derse opposes this, and so we will unleash a great weapon against them."

"What weapon?"

"Come," the tiger says. It walks away, several other tigers accompanying it. After a moment's thought you follow after the tiger.

"In the center of this world, where no light dares enter, Nix sits bound in her chains. There she plays her flute and communes with the rats and cockroaches that assemble around her. She wishes to be free."

You haven't really gotten enough information to know if that would be a good thing or not, but Nix is sounding kind of scary so you're going to guess "no" on this one.

"Nix is your weapon."

"If we can free her then Nix will serve us. This is so."

"How do you know it'll work out like that?"

This is starting to sound like unbottling a genie and setting it free.

"Nix is desperate. She must be released. For centuries she has whispered into our dreams. For as long as this we have sought a way to unleash her. She will be our dragon."

You come to a stone slab. Like the one that Cassie died on.

"How many of these are there?"

"One in every Land."

"My friend was killed on one of them. Why?"

"Only one who has died will be permitted to meet Nix."

"And that's where Cassie has gone?"

The tigers shake their heads. "But perhaps… you could see how she can be returned from the grave. All must meet their Denizen."

"And then what?"

"The Reckoning is coming. Skaia and all of the worlds of the Medium will die. We must free Nix, and send her out to meet the ships of Derse. Will you go to meet Nix?"

"I will."

=== JAKE: Be Marco. Prepare to accessorize.


End file.
